Riverhead Town Board members say they did not see Calverton Aviation & Technology’s controversial plans for the development of town land in the Calverton Enterprise Park before CAT presented them to the Riverhead Industrial Development Agency in September, despite the town being a joint applicant for financial assistance from the IDA.
The board authorized the joint application in a unanimous vote last March.
Dawn Thomas, executive director of the Riverhead Community Development Agency, which owns the town property at the enterprise park, signed the application on behalf of the town on Sept. 9.
But in interviews yesterday, three town board members and the town supervisor said they had not seen Calverton Aviation & Technology’s plans before the company’s attorneys and consultants presented them to the Riverhead Industrial Development Agency at a public meeting Sept. 21.
“Never saw them. Didn’t see them until they came out in your article,” Council Member Tim Hubbard said in a phone interview yesterday, referring to RiverheadLOCAL’s Sept. 22 report on CAT’s presentation to the IDA the previous afternoon.
Council members Frank Beyrodt and Bob Kern said the same in separate phone calls yesterday. Council member Ken Rothwell could not be reached for comment.
Supervisor Yvette Aguiar, asked directly by WRIV Dawn Patrol host Bruce Tria on air yesterday whether CAT showed the Town Board its plans for EPCAL also said the board had not seen the plans prior to the company’s Sept. 21 IDA presentation.
“No they did not. Not the final plans,” Aguiar said. “They finally put up the application that the IDA looked through,” she continued. “It’s still being vetted. That’s probably not going to be the final.”
Calverton Aviation & Technology’s plans call for the development, in phases, of more than 8.4 million square feet of logistics and distribution buildings situated along the two runways, which are included in the contract of sale between the town and CAT, as well as the development of 400,000 square feet of non-warehouse uses in three smaller buildings. The plans also include upgrading both runways, relocating the taxiways, reactivating the GPS approach system and extending and enhancing the existing rail system at the site. The development plans are described in the 72-page application document signed by Thomas Sept. 9.
Thomas said in an interview yesterday she and the Town Board reviewed the contents of the application. “It’s more generalized stuff, just in terms of what the potential buildout is. It’s generally proposals. It’s nothing firm,” she said.
But the words on the pages of the application came to life in the architect’s renderings and engineer’s site drawings presented at the Sept. 21 IDA meeting, where CAT’s consultants pitched the site’s use and marketability as an air cargo hub to meet the growing demand for logistics services on Long Island.
At the conclusion of CAT’s presentation, the IDA board unanimously approved a resolution accepting the joint application of Calverton Aviation & Technology and the Riverhead Community Development Agency seeking financial assistance for the project consisting of exemptions from mortgage recording taxes, sales taxes and real property taxes on improvements at the site. The IDA subsequently started its review of the application, which remains pending.
Since the plans were unveiled in September, the Town Board has been fielding questions and complaints from community members. The supervisor suggested people were “overreacting” to the CAT presentation.
In the days following the presentation, CAT representatives issued statements denying the site would be used as “an air freight cargo terminal” and stating its “intent is to utilize the runways for the purpose of encouraging aeronautical startups to design and test their designs on site, to allow corporate jets to bring in executives to connect with their investments, and to provide a means for urgent or time-sensitive supply chain components to be flown in…”
The plans described in CAT’s application and unveiled at the Sept. 21 IDA meeting bear little resemblance to those previously presented to the Town Board during hearings in 2018— which promised development that would bring high-paying research and development jobs in aviation and technology.
“We joined in the application with them based on what was presented to us way back when, about it being an aviation aeronautics technology center,” Hubbard said yesterday.
Hubbard said he’s been asking the supervisor for a meeting with the IDA at a public work session to discuss this, because shortly after the IDA presentation in September, CAT attorney Chris Kent “came out and said ‘No, no, no. That’s not what it’s going to be.’ And that’s the last I’ve heard and that’s why I’ve been asking [the supervisor] for a meeting.”
Hubbard made his request publicly at the Town Board’s last work session, irking Aguiar. She complained about it yesterday during her weekly radio appearance on WRIV and said during that on-air conversation that the IDA would be at the work session scheduled to take place this morning. Yesterday afternoon, Hubbard said he was unaware that the IDA discussion he’s been asking for had been scheduled. “Matters surrounding update on IDA application process” is listed as a discussion item with IDA Executive Director Tracy Stark-James on today’s Town Board work session agenda.
A development plan calling for millions of square feet of logistics and distribution warehouses that receive packages by air is “nothing that I signed up for,” Hubbard said.
“As we know, that property is prohibited for use as an airport. The only thing it can really be used for — for a plane— is like executives flying in and out of the airport if they have a business there. It was that type of thing,” Hubbard said.
“The intention certainly wasn’t for a logistics center or something to come in like that because they’re a tenant and we can fly large planes in and out,” he said.
“That’s nothing I support, have ever supported or will support,” he said.
Hubbard is the only current Town Board member who was on the board in December 2017, when the board voted to approve the $40 million contract of sale with CAT. Hubbard and then Council Member Jodi Giglio voted against the deal.
But after a nearly year-long review process, both Hubbard and Giglio voted in favor of finding CAT “qualified-and-eligible” to buy and develop the property, as required by the State Urban Renewal Law. The state law allows the sale of land in a designated Urban Renewal Area, like the Calverton Enterprise Park, without an appraisal or competitive bid, if the buyer is determined to be “qualified-and-eligible” under locally adopted rules. The town’s determination for CAT came in a 3-2 vote in November 2018, with Hubbard and Giglio joining then-Council Member James Wooten in support. Former Supervisor Laura Jens-Smith and former Council Member Catherine Kent voted against it. After the vote, Jens-Smith signed the contract.
In order to complete the sale, the town needed to subdivide its 2,100± acres in the enterprise park into eight separate lots. But it was unable to get final approval of the land subdivision because it was unable to resolve regulatory issues with the State Department of Environmental Conservation.
The town and CAT negotiated a contract amendment intended to overcome that hurdle. The town would join CAT in a financial assistance application to the Riverhead IDA. If the IDA approves the application, the town will transfer all 2,100± of land to the IDA, which will lease the 1,643± acres to CAT and the remaining town acreage to the town. CAT will pay the town the balance of the $40 million purchase price and pursue the subdivision. Once the subdivision is finalized, the IDA will transfer title of the lots comprising the 1,643± acres to CAT and the lots comprising the town acreage to the town. In the meantime, CAT’s lease of the land from the IDA will allow it to pursue its development plans while the subdivision is pending, the CDA’s Thomas said in an interview yesterday. CAT would need to obtain a special permit for the development from the Town Board, Thomas said.
Once the IDA leases the land to CAT, the company will have the “site control” it needs to fully create development plans, Thomas said. Until then, the plans are conceptual.
“The ability for them to deliver on the promises made in the contract, which were incorporated into the IDA application, is what the IDA would be reviewing, just in terms of buildout, square footage, all of that,” Thomas said. “The specifics of the development are not ready to be determined yet…so the exact square footage, layout, uses, all of those things are TBD.”
The applicant can’t be expected to “spend millions in engineering and infrastructure investigation, environmental studies and all of that stuff” until they have the lease, Thomas said. “Then that plan becomes a subject of public discussion. It’s a SEQRA analysis, it’s all of that stuff.”
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